By Kara Hallam

Enterprise Editor

@Kara Hallam

From a University of California Los Angeles survey of 400,000 students with varying degrees of course intensity, it was found on average that high schools students have about one hour of homework a night.

Meanwhile, in a survey of 30 Coppell High School Advanced Placement students, it was found that they spent an average of 3.6 hours on homework a night.

One student even responded that the average time they spend on homework daily was nine hours.

CHS is an amazing community with a variety of activities that students can thrive in. However, the amount of stress many students put themselves under in order to achieve some future dream, can be excessive in many instances.

Hard work is important and it is something I greatly value. But sometimes it can feel like myself or my peers are drowning in work.

Of all the daily complaining, stressing and breaking down that goes on in the AP setting, what seems to be missing is the notion or realization that these students put themselves in these situations.

If life was miserable during the first six weeks of an AP course, why not drop it? Better yet, why did you take it in the first place?

Right now, I can only imagine the many AP students ready to offer the counterargument “but I can’t not take an AP science” or “colleges will know I dropped a class and I can’t do that.”

Well, I am here to say, yes, you can.

During my freshman year I attended the private school my sister had thrived at. Having been ranked number one in her class at the end of her junior year, she was accepted into Duke University. My parents and I both hoped for a similar outcome for me.

I had scored high on my placement tests, and  was one of the very few that I knew at my small-sized school of 200, who was offered to join four higher honors courses (which is equivalent to an AP course here). I had amazing opportunities for community service there and other extracurriculars that I would not have received elsewhere.

I am leaving out one small detail however: I was bullied, excluded and talked about because of who I was, where I came from and who my friends were. Since the first day I walked into that school, it was made quite clear I would never fit in.

I kept telling myself my smarts, my grades and my drive would get me through all of it, and when I was president of the United States one day it would all be worth it.

For awhile that worked, but rooting your identity in one objective is a very dangerous thing. My sophomore year even fewer in my grade level made it into AP Spanish along with me. I joined the class because it was the highest level course I could take of something.

I spent three hours a night just to fail our online assignments and I made several quiz grades in the 30s and 40s. I did not know what to do; my grades, my future, it felt like it was going to disappear.

That’s when I realized, for the past year and a half, I had been stuck. I kept working so my life could be better one day, completely aware of how miserable it was in the present. Working towards something like a dream college or a dream career can easily fall apart when it is the only thing you cling to.

Being happy in the moment, day-to-day life is much more important.

So I transferred to CHS, fully aware I was giving up my unique extracurriculars and potential rank in the top 10 percent. I gave up the private school title and ended up a year behind in math.

Sound like an overachiever’s nightmare? However, after walking into my first class of a fresh new start, I knew I had made the best decision of my life.

My experiences gave me a perspective to never let myself be miserable again just for the sake of my grade point average or future career. Although many do not share the same reason for their daily pains, a huge workload can cause the same stress as being surrounded by a bunch of mean girls.

You don’t have to give up your whole entire workload so you can be happy. But when planning your schedule maybe you don’t need to sign up for that extra AP class or activity. Really think about what an extra time commitment taking on a leadership position can be.

People do not consider enough that their choices affect their workload and their own happiness nor how much more stressful taking on an extra activity, position or class can be.

CHS is a competitive environment and many are doing the best they can to keep up, worried that their dream college won’t accept them if they take six instead of seven AP classes. But what happens if you take all seven and you still don’t get into that college?

The future is important, but just stop right now, and ask yourself if you are happy. Or stressed beyond compare? If the answer is the latter, it’s time to take something off your plate that you don’t enjoy. Of all the priorities you’ve made, make sure you are one of them too.